Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Minnie Lee was born in 1898, the year after A. B. Crumpler began his Holiness revival in Dunn, North Carolina. She was a child when Gaston Cashwell introduced speaking in tongues in a Dunn warehouse in 1906. [1] By the time she would have become active in a church, other preachers were better known.
Julian Boyd recorded four of her religious songs, but only one hinted at her beliefs. Her version of "You Can Run a Long Time" began:
"When I looked down into holiness,
I saw it true and plain;
I saw that I could not despise his word
And in his love remain." [2]
As mentioned in the post for 22 March 2020, Free Will Baptists did not accept depravity as the human condition. Sin was an act of free will, and falling away from God through sin was their greatest fear. Resisting the impulse to "transgress God’s Law" was "among the highest of virtues." [3]
The use of word "Holiness" as a label for a way of life was introduced by Methodists. A Free Will Baptist hymnal published in New Bern in 1846 contained seven references to it. Four were Methodist, one was by a New Hampshire Baptist, one by a Maryland Baptist, and one may have been locally composed. [4] A later hymnal, published in the Greenville, North Carolina, area just after the Civil War, contained five references to Holiness: one by Charles Wesley, two by Isaac Watts, and two songs from the earlier songbook. [5]
One of the songs that appeared in both hymnals suggested the believer should follow the "way the holy prophets went" to avoid "banishment." It was described as "the King’s high way of holiness." [6] The other republished hymn described the "road that leads to God" as the "way of holiness." [7]
Lee used "Holiness" as a way of life, not as the achieved status promoted by Phoebe Palmer, Crumpler, and Cashwell. Their meaning of "sanctified and holy" occurred in the first verse of Bryan Banks’ version of "I Shall Not Be Moved." [8]
Lee’s first-person Holiness verse was not part of the original song. The rest of the verses were
third-person admonishments to church members who did not live up to standards of conventional morality. The chorus was more solemn. It warned:
"You can run on a long time
With the cover of the world pulled over your face;
You can run a long time;
But your sins are going to find you out."
The only other known version was collected from African Americans in Kentucky in the 1920s by Mary Allen Grissom. The chorus and five of her ten verses were the same as five of Lee’s seven. It did not contain the Holiness verse; its additional stanzas criticized the unseemly behavior of preachers. [9]
The thematic structure was like a sermon Billy Sunday published in 1908 [10] and continued to preach thereafter. [11] "Be Sure Your Sins Will Find You Out" repeated the warning of God’s omnipotence after each anecdote about a uncommitted church goer.
Before World War I, Sunday only preached in the North and Midwest. After a revival in New York City sponsored by John D. Rockefeller in the spring of 1917, he began speaking in the South. He was in Atlanta in the winter of 1917 and in Louisville in 1923. [12]
Sunday responded to segregation in Atlanta by holding five separate meetings with African Americans. His music director, Home Rodeheaver, recruited choirs from local Black colleges. Sunday’s first meeting was attended by 15,000; the choir had a thousand voices. [13] In subsequent meetings, local African American leaders took over the song leading, and, to quote a local newspaper, "the real music began." [14]
In the first African-American meeting, Sunday said:
"There are two verses of scripture I’d like to blaze all over Atlanta, and everywhere around. They are these:
"‘Be sure your sins will find you out,’ and
"‘If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness’." [15]
Rodeheaver probably did not publish "Your Sins Are Gonna Find You Out." In Atlanta, he used popular spirituals like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and revival standards like "Brighten the Corner." [16] More likely, some souvenir vendor sold a cheap songbook that has not surfaced on the internet.
The success of Sunday’s revival in Atlanta meant any African American could have picked up the song and taken it to North Carolina, where, eventually, Lee heard the localized version. It diffusion path would not have been that different from the one for the other song Lee knew that first was published by Rodeheaver, "I Shall Not Be Moved." [17]
Sunday’s mother had been a Baptist; his wife was a Presbyterian. [18] He reduced sin to a list of tabooed activities like dancing, playing cards, and, especially in the years before Prohibition, drinking. Like Charles Finney, he used humiliation as a way to shame people into repentance. [19]
While Free Will Baptists had the same concerns about alienating God as Sunday, they did not share his desire to unmask their neighbors. That was probably why someone modified the lyrics of "You Can Run" with the introductory Holiness verse, much like someone in the 1840s had altered the New Hampshire Baptist hymn.
Three of Lee’s four religious songs – "You Can Run," "I Shall Not Be Moved," and "Come by Here" – were known by African Americans and Boyd did not transcribe them in dialect. The other described a man who Jesus told to preach the gospel. When he asked the Lord what to say, his "Hebenly Fader" spoke to him:
"Mah hands wuz tight and mah feet wuz bound,
De elements opened and de Lawd come down.
De voice I heard, it sound so sweet;
De elements opened to de soles of me feet." [20]
This ballad has not been reported elsewhere, so its province is unknown. The composer may have been an African American, or a white using a Black persona to express the inexpressible, but in a way that made the abstract concrete. Depending on the response of the listener, the singer could claim it was a joke about "the other" or acknowledge the reality of direct contact with the Holy Spirit.
End Notes
1. Crumpler and Cashwell were discussed in the post for 22 March 2020.
2. Minnie Lee. "You Can Run on a Long Time." Collected by Julian P. Boyd in Alliance, North Carolina, in 1926. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Durham: Duke University Press, 1952. 3:97.
3. T. F. Harrison and J. M. Barfield. History of the Free Will Baptists of North Carolina. Ayden, North Carolina: Free Will Baptist Press, 1898. 95.
4. Enoch Cobb. The Free Will Baptist Hymn Book. Newbern, North Carolina: William G. Hall. 1846.
5. Rufus K. Hearn, Joseph S. Bell, and Jesse Randolph. Zion’s Hymns. Falkland, North Carolina: 1867.
6. John Cennick. "Jesus Is the Way." [21] Cobb, 3, and Hearn, 31. Cennick worked with John Wesley, then left to join George Whitefield in 1740 after the latter returned from the colonies. Cennick later joined the Moravians in London. [22] He wrote this while working for Whitefield. [23]
7. "In pleasure sweet here we do meet." Cobb, 127, and Hearn, 155. It first was published in a New Hampshire Baptist hymnal edited by Joshua Smith in 1803. [24] Smith’s 1791 edition is not on the internet, and since the contents of the different editions varied widely, [25] I don’t know if he published it earlier. Smith’s version did not include the verse about holiness.
8. B. D. Banks. "I Shall Not Be Moved." Collected by Julian P. Boyd in Alliance, North Carolina, in 1926. Brown 3:639. This was discussed in the post for 4 August 2019.
9. "Yo’ Sins Are Gonna Find You Out." Mary Allen Grissom. The Negro Sings a New Song. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1930. Reprinted by Dover Books of New York in 1969. 52–53. In her Forward, Grissom wrote: "most of the songs included in this volume have been taken directly from the Negroes in their present-day worship, and have been selected from those sung in the neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky, and certain rural sections in Adair County." Her grandfather was born in Adair County in 1830, [26] and her father was a physician there. [27] She was teaching piano at the Louisville Conservatory of Music in the 1920s. [28]
10. William Ashley Sunday. Life and Labors of Rev. Wm. A. (Billy) Sunday, the Great Modern Evangelist. Decatur, Illinois: Herman, Poole and Company, 1908. 265.
11. Howard Johnston said he preached the sermon in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1914. [29]
12. Angela. "Billy Sunday." Apples of Gold website. 20 May 2009.
13. David W. Wills and Albert J. Raboteau. "African Americans and Billy Sunday in Atlanta (November–December 1917)." Amherst College website. Parts of the local African-American press criticized Black ministers for participating in the Jim Crow meetings. While they have a valid point, the fact the city allowed such large congregations of African Americans without whites being present to monitor them was extraordinary. Sunday and Rodeheaver, who explicitly forbid whites from attending the African-American meetings, successfully exploited the Jim Crow laws to benefit both themselves and their audiences.
14. Ned McIntosh. "Negroes Show Way to Whites in Giving at Sunday Meeting." Atlanta Constitution. 2 December 1917. 1A, 7A. Republished by Wills. Has the quotation.
"Religion Is Obedience to God’s Command, Says Sunday." Atlanta Constitution. 9 December 1917. 16A. Republished by Wills. "Rev. D. P. Johnson, a negro minister, who took Rody’s place at lending the singing and exhorting the sinners, that the meeting closed in a spontaneous outbreak of old-time religion which made the very rafters of the tabernacle shake with fervor." Rody was Rodeheaver.
15. "Billy’s Negro Meeting Great Success." Atlanta Georgian. 20 November 1917. Home edition, 9. Republished by Wills. The newspaper was owned by William Randolph Hurst. [30] The verse was Numbers 32:23: "But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out." [31]
16. Ned McIntosh. "Rody Learns about Singing and Sunday about Emotion When Negroes Hit the Trail." Atlanta Constitution. 20 November 1917. 1, 5. Republished by Wills.
17. "I Shall Not Be Moved" was discussed in the post for 4 August 2019.
18. Atlanta Constitution, Religion Is Obedience.
19. Charles Grandison Finney was discussed in the post for 12 August 2017. Free Will Baptists did not humiliate others; they practiced humility through the ritual foot washing with communion. [32] Lee’s third verse of "I Shall Not Be Moved" was "I love my neighbors." [33]
20. Minnie Lee. "Jesus Says, ‘You Goes and I Goes Wid You’." Collected by Julian P. Boyd in Alliance, North Carolina, in 1926. Brown 3:643.
21. John Cennick. "Jesus, my all, to heaven is gone." Sacred Hymns for the Use of Religious Societies. Bristol, England: Felix Farley, 1743.
22. John Julian. "Cennick, John." In A Dictionary of Hymnology. Edited by John Julian. London: John Murray, 1907 edition. 1:215–216.
23. John Julian. "Jesus, my all, to heaven is gone." In Julian. 1:601.
24. "In the Lord’s word left on record." Joshua Smith and Samuel Sleeper. Divine Hymns. Portland, Maine: Thomas Clark, 1803. 33.
25. David W. Music and Paul Akers Richardson. "I Will Sing the Wondrous Story." Macon: Mercer University Press, June 2008. 138.
26. Rich K. "Dr William T Grissom." Find a Grave website. 19 March 2012.
27. Judy Lynn. "Benjamin Bell Grissom." Find a Grave website. 29 November 2013.
28. "Sings Negro Songs at Chapel Tuesday." The [Lawrence College] Lawrentian. 15 October 1926.
"Mary A. Grissom Presents Recital." Chicago Daily Illini. 14 April 1928. 1.
29. Howard Agnew Johnston. "When Al Saunders Hit the Trail." Sunday School Times. Reprinted by The Pennsylvania School Journal, August 1915, 59–61; and by The Presbyterian of the South, 8 September 1915.
30. Wikipedia. "The Atlanta Georgian."
31. King James version.
32. Harrison. 187.
33. Minnie Lee. "I Shall Not Be Blue." Collected by Julian P. Boyd in Alliance, North Carolina, in 1926. Brown 3:639.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Sunday, March 22, 2020
North Carolina Holiness Camp Meetings
Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Holiness camp meetings began at Vineland, New Jersey, in 1867. Phoebe Palmer’s interpretation of John Wesley’s second blessing as an identifiable, emotional experience was preached in midwestern and southern plains states. [1] It does not appear to have been heard in Craven and Pamlico counties in the 1880s when African Americans were holding camp meetings.
Instead, white churches had revivals. [2] Methodists held two in New Bern in 1883. [3] Baptists in the city staged revivals in 1885 [4] and 1887. [5] Disciples of Christ in Pamlico County had too few clergymen to met more often than the mandated once a quarter. [6] The Bethany congregation at modern-day Arapahoe held a Fourth of July picnic in 1883 that drew 600 people and featured both vocal and instrumental music. [7]
Free Will Baptists may have heard rumors of the Holiness movement from their senior members. Local churches were organized into conferences that issued Disciplines that defined their beliefs. The network between them was maintained by delegates, who were appointed by each conference, attending meetings of the others.
The Cape Fear Conference, based in Wilmington and Onslow County, adopted Wesley’s view that sanctification "commences at regeneration" and continues with one "constantly growing in grace" in 1883. [8] The Greenville conference separated itself in 1886, [9] and considered uniting with the Cape Fear one. [10]
Three years later, in 1889, the Cape Fear Conference accepted Holiness doctrine. It revised its Discipline to say sanctification was "an instantaneous work of God’s grace in a believer’s heart whereby the heart is cleansed from all sin and made pure by the blood of Christ." [11]
Upper- and middle-class Northerners began having summer vacations near beaches. Lewis Miller and John Vincent converted a camp meeting ground on New York’s Lake Chautauqua into a resort in 1874. [12] New Bern Methodists held a weekend camp meeting in Vanceboro in 1889 at a site accessible by the steamer Trent. [13] In 1890, it lasted two weeks. [14] The next year the New Bern newspaper reported "the camp ground is situated on the north side of Neuse river in a beautiful grove near the church." [15]
The economy crashed in February 1893. Banks had no funds to offer credit to farmers in the spring of 1894. National unemployment went from 3.7% in 1892 to 12.3% in 1894 and stayed high until 1898. [16] Membership in the Cape Fear Conference increased by 26%. [17] That was greater than the more normal increase of 6.7% registered by the Eastern Free Will Baptist Conference. [18]
In 1894, during the depths of this depression, people from New Bern began attending camp meetings held along the shore in Carteret County, just east of New Bern. [19] The Trent ferried them to Hunting Quarter in August. [20] In June, the local paper noted people from New Bern were
"fairly represented in the congregation and numbers of the summer visitors at the seaside also went over. About a thousand people were on the grounds during the services and at one time a hundred boats of many kinds and [. . .] lined the shore for half a mile or more." [21]
The Wade Shore meeting was held near Morehead City, and featured nine Methodist ministers.
Local Methodists probably did not hear Holiness doctrine at these camp meeting. The church hierarchy had begun criticizing Palmer’s views as a distortion of John Wesley’s theology. [22] A. B. Crumpler was raised in Sampson County southwest of Goldsboro, [23] and ordained at the annual Methodist conference in New Bern in 1888. [24] He had to go to Missouri to become sanctified in 1890. [25]
When times grew bad, preachers began arguing society had entered the final phase before Christ’s return. The Holiness movement became more radical as it absorbed elements of premillennialism, a desire to restore the original church, and a search for more demonstrable signs of sanctification. The Southern Methodist hierarchy responded by denouncing the movement in 1894. [26]
When Crumpler returned to North Carolina in 1894, the "Bishop of North Carolina would not credential him without sanction from Bishop in Missouri." He turned to evangelism in Dauphin, Samson, and neighboring counties. [27]
In December 1895, Crumpler went to the Methodist conference in Elizabeth City [28] to request reassignment as an evangelist rather than circuit rider. [29] "On his way home, he stopped at New Bern where he ‘accidentally preached to the colored people in a meeting in the morning’ and for the white people in the evening at ‘Hancock Street’." [30]
His belief that God did not discriminate was more radical than his Holiness theology. He may have had to speak to African Americans and whites in separate meetings, but he preached the same message to both groups.
In May 1896, Crumpler was back in Sampson County where his revival in Dunn ignited a regional awakening. When he was preaching his "‘Sermon to the Colored,’ whites began to crowd in with blacks under the tent." [31]
The success in Dunn led to more invitations. A New Bern newspaper reported Crumpler would be holding "a series of Tent meetings at Stones Bay" in Onslow County in November 1896. [32] In December it noted he was at Kinston. [33]
The Methodist hierarchy tried Crumpler for insubordination in 1899. [34] He withdrew from the conference to form the Holiness Church the next year. [35] Among the tenets defined in its 1901 Discipline was the general view that
"a person will know unmistakably that he is God’s child, by feeling God’s spirit bearing witness with his spirit that he is a child of God." [36]
It added the Holiness belief in sanctification removed all remnants of original sin "through the blood of Christ." [37]
This language was not very different from that of Free Will Baptists. In 1898, church elders explained the denomination did not accept original sin, the belief underpinning Wesleyanism. Still, individuals had to overcome their propensity to "transgress God’s Law." [38] This was done through baptism, the death of the original self, [39] and a new birth "of the Spirit" as one of "God’s children." [40]
Preachers in the Cape Fear Conference were the most open to Crumpler. Joseph Campbell suggested individuals from other denominations joined the Free Will Baptist church when they were excommunicated by their own churches. [41] Conference membership increased by 18% in 1896. [42]
The Western Conference responded to the surge in potential members in 1894 by reaffirming full immersion baptism was required for membership. [43] The Central Conference withdrew from the Eastern one in 1895, but maintained the same Discipline. [44] While the Eastern Conference included the counties on Pamlico Sound, which lay between the mainland and the Outer Banks, [45] the Central Original Conference included the areas most affected by Crumpler. [46]
In 1906, a member of the Holiness Church went to hear William Seymour at Azusa Street in Los Angeles. [47] When Gaston Cashwell returned, he held a month-long revival in Dunn. Attendees soon were "speaking in tongues, singing in tongues, laughing the holy laugh, shouting and leaping and dancing and praising God." [48]
The Holiness Church was divided over using tongues as the sole evidence of attainting Holiness, as distinct from one of God’s gifts. [49] In 1908, Crumpler and others left what then became a Pentecostal denomination. [50] Many of the members of the Cape Fear Conference followed Cashwell. In 1911, they formed their own Pentecostal Free Will Baptist church. [51]
End Notes
1. Phoebe Palmer and the post-Civil War camp meeting movement were discussed in the post for 7 December 2017.
2. Superficially revivals and camps meetings were the same: both sought to convert people. While their goals and sermons may have been the same, the social experiences differed.
Revivals were conducted in local churches by the local ministers, perhaps with the aid of someone from the district level to reinforce theological orthodoxy. They followed Charles Finney’s suggestions to break the wills of potential converts before their neighbors. [52]
Camp meetings were held at a distance, often in a field or woodland. Individuals attended with their family or friends, but mingled with strangers. While revivals were held on successive evenings, camp meetings lasted all day. Different preachers took turns, so more than one interpretation might be heard. During breaks between speakers, there was more time for singing.
3. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 5 May 1883. 1.
Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 9 November 1883. 1. "[Unclear name] closed the series of revival meetings at the M. E. church." ME was the Southern Methodist church.
4. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 28 May 1885. 1.
5. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 8 May 1887. 2.
6. Charles Crossfield Ware. Pamlico Profile. New Bern: Owen G. Dunn Company, 1961. 59. The mandate was discussed on page 25.
7. Ware. 12. James B. Bennett told him "in early days we had preaching four times a year." [53]
8. Vinson Synan. The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997 edition. 64. Emphasis added.
9. T. F. Harrison and J. M. Barfield. History of the Free Will Baptists of North Carolina. Ayden, North Carolina: Free Will Baptist Press, 1898. 387.
10. Harrison. 390.
11. Synan. 64–65. Emphasis added.
12. Wikipedia. "Chautauqua."
13. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 4 September 1889. 1. It was sponsored by Lane’s Chapel.
14. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 6 September 1890. 1. It was sponsored by Lane’s Chapel.
15. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 22 July 1891. 1. It lasted for two weeks and was sponsored by Lane’s Chapel.
16. David Whitten. "Depression of 1893." Economic History Association website. Edited by Robert Whaples. 14 August 2001. His source was Christina Romer. "Spurious Volatility in Historical Unemployment Data." Journal of Political Economy 94:1–37:1986.
17. Meeting minutes of the Cape Fear Conference reported 1,419 members in 1892 [54] and 1,789 in 1893. [55]
18. Meeting minutes for the Eastern Conference were less reliable. Leaders reported 8,318 in 1890, [56] 7,907 in 1891, [57] nothing in 1892, and 8,874 in 1893. [58] The 1891 number did not fall in the chronological order of minutes, and so was hard to interpret. If the 1891 number was wrong or represented a different part of the Conference, then the change between 1890 and 1893 may have been one of slow, steady increase.
19. Carteret County was shown on the map included with the post for 15 March 2020.
20. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 12 August 1894. 1. William S. Powell and Michael Hill located Hunting Quarter in The North Carolina Gazetteer. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010 edition. 258.
21. "Wade Shore Camp Meeting." The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 26 June 1894. 1. One word in the OCR text was not decipherable. The reference to "summer visitors" may suggest Northerners, who were familiar with Holiness meetings, were important sponsors of these particular events. They even may have been responsible for introducing the Northern Methodist idea into the area.
22. In 1887, the editor of the Methodist Quarterly Review wrote:
"The holiness association, the holiness periodical, the holiness prayer meeting, the holiness preacher, are all modern novelties. They are not Wesleyan. We believe that a living Wesley would never admit them into the Methodist system." [59]
23. R. Michael Thornton. Fire in the Carolinas. Lake Mary, Florida: Creation House, 2014. 16. Sampson County was the "on" west of Duplin County on the map posted on 15 March 2020. It had been settled by Scots-Irish migrants in 1745. Descendants of New Bern’s original Anabaptist soon joined them. [60]
24. "Rev. A. B. Crumpler." The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 13 December 1895. 1.
25. Thornton. 40.
26. Synan. 39–40.
27. Daily Journal, 13 December 1895.
28. Thornton. 51.
29. Daily Journal, 13 December 1895.
30. Thornton. 51.
31. Thornton. 51.
32. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 10 October 1896. 4. Onslow County was mentioned in the post for 15 March 2020 and was shown on the map with the same post.
33. Item. New Berne Weekly Journal. 24 December 1896. 1. Kinston was mentioned in the post for 15 March 2020 and was shown on the map with the same post.
34. Synan. 63. He was acquitted, and withdrew voluntarily.
35. A. B. Crumpler. The Discipline of the Holiness Church. Goldsboro, North Carolina: Nash Brothers, 1901. 3–4. Quoted by Joseph Enoch Campbell. The Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1898-1948. Franklin Springs, Georgia: Publishing House of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1951. Reprinted by Wipf and Stock Publishers of Eugene, Oregon, in 2016. 219–220.
36. Campbell. 225.
37. Campbell. 226. This language had been used by Palmer. When she was wrestling with her failure to feel salvation, she argued with herself: "I am either a child of God, or I am not." [61] She thought longer, and compared loving God to loving her parents. In her journal, she concluded
"I know I love them, and on the same principle I know that I love God, and therefore I KNOW that I am a Child of God." I then heartily believed, simply because GOD said so. I had the evidence of his WORD, and therefore with confidence said, ‘I know that I have the evidences of adoption, I am a Child of God’." [62]
38. Harrison. 95.
39. "This water baptism is a declaratory or representative ordinance. Connecting Christ’s death and burial, as the procuring cause of salvation, and his resurrection as the pledge and assurance of a future felicity, with our personal experience, it represents or declares our death and burial to the world, and resurrection to ‘newness of life’." [63]
40. Harrison. 97.
41. Campbell. 250.
42. Meeting minutes of the Cape Fear Conference reported 1,829 members in 1895 [64] and 2,159 in 1896. [65]
43. Harrison. 396.
44. Harrison. 341.
45. The Eastern Conference included Pamlico and Craven counties, as well as Beaufort, Carteret, Hyde, Jones, and Lenoir south of the Neuse river. [66]
46. The Central Original Conference included "Lenoir, on the North side of Neuse river, Wayne, on the West side of the Wilmington & Weldon R. R., and Wilson the same as Wayne, Greene, Pitt, Martin, Washington, Hertford, Bertie, Northampton, Edgecombe, Halifax, Dare, Tyrrell and Southampton, Va." [67]
47. Seymour and Azusa Street were discussed in the post for 7 December 2017.
48. Campbell. 240–241.
49. For instance, Crumper thought divine healing was available to "every believer who would call for the Elders of the Church." Illness was not considered a sign of God’s displeasure. [68]
50. Campbell. 245.
51. Robert M. Anderson. Vision of the Disinherited. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979. 143.
52. Charles Grandison Finney was discussed in the post for 12 August 2017.
53. James B. Bennett. Quoted by Ware. 14.
54. Harrison. 382.
55. Harrison. 383.
56. Harrison. 336.
57. Harrison. 330.
58. Harrison. 340.
59. Daniel Whedon. Quoted by Synan. 35. Synan’s source was John Leland Peters. Christian Perfection and American Methodism. New York: Abington Press, 1956. 139.
60. Wikipedia. "Sampson County, North Carolina."
61. Phoebe Palmer. Journal entry, August 1835. In The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer. Edited by Richard Wheatley. New York: W. C. Palmer, Jr., 1876. 29.
62. Palmer. 29–30.
63. Harrison. 39.
64. Harrison. 385.
65. Harrison. 386.
66. Harrison. 341.
67. Harrison. 341.
68. Campbell. 226.
Holiness camp meetings began at Vineland, New Jersey, in 1867. Phoebe Palmer’s interpretation of John Wesley’s second blessing as an identifiable, emotional experience was preached in midwestern and southern plains states. [1] It does not appear to have been heard in Craven and Pamlico counties in the 1880s when African Americans were holding camp meetings.
Instead, white churches had revivals. [2] Methodists held two in New Bern in 1883. [3] Baptists in the city staged revivals in 1885 [4] and 1887. [5] Disciples of Christ in Pamlico County had too few clergymen to met more often than the mandated once a quarter. [6] The Bethany congregation at modern-day Arapahoe held a Fourth of July picnic in 1883 that drew 600 people and featured both vocal and instrumental music. [7]
Free Will Baptists may have heard rumors of the Holiness movement from their senior members. Local churches were organized into conferences that issued Disciplines that defined their beliefs. The network between them was maintained by delegates, who were appointed by each conference, attending meetings of the others.
The Cape Fear Conference, based in Wilmington and Onslow County, adopted Wesley’s view that sanctification "commences at regeneration" and continues with one "constantly growing in grace" in 1883. [8] The Greenville conference separated itself in 1886, [9] and considered uniting with the Cape Fear one. [10]
Three years later, in 1889, the Cape Fear Conference accepted Holiness doctrine. It revised its Discipline to say sanctification was "an instantaneous work of God’s grace in a believer’s heart whereby the heart is cleansed from all sin and made pure by the blood of Christ." [11]
Upper- and middle-class Northerners began having summer vacations near beaches. Lewis Miller and John Vincent converted a camp meeting ground on New York’s Lake Chautauqua into a resort in 1874. [12] New Bern Methodists held a weekend camp meeting in Vanceboro in 1889 at a site accessible by the steamer Trent. [13] In 1890, it lasted two weeks. [14] The next year the New Bern newspaper reported "the camp ground is situated on the north side of Neuse river in a beautiful grove near the church." [15]
The economy crashed in February 1893. Banks had no funds to offer credit to farmers in the spring of 1894. National unemployment went from 3.7% in 1892 to 12.3% in 1894 and stayed high until 1898. [16] Membership in the Cape Fear Conference increased by 26%. [17] That was greater than the more normal increase of 6.7% registered by the Eastern Free Will Baptist Conference. [18]
In 1894, during the depths of this depression, people from New Bern began attending camp meetings held along the shore in Carteret County, just east of New Bern. [19] The Trent ferried them to Hunting Quarter in August. [20] In June, the local paper noted people from New Bern were
"fairly represented in the congregation and numbers of the summer visitors at the seaside also went over. About a thousand people were on the grounds during the services and at one time a hundred boats of many kinds and [. . .] lined the shore for half a mile or more." [21]
The Wade Shore meeting was held near Morehead City, and featured nine Methodist ministers.
Local Methodists probably did not hear Holiness doctrine at these camp meeting. The church hierarchy had begun criticizing Palmer’s views as a distortion of John Wesley’s theology. [22] A. B. Crumpler was raised in Sampson County southwest of Goldsboro, [23] and ordained at the annual Methodist conference in New Bern in 1888. [24] He had to go to Missouri to become sanctified in 1890. [25]
When times grew bad, preachers began arguing society had entered the final phase before Christ’s return. The Holiness movement became more radical as it absorbed elements of premillennialism, a desire to restore the original church, and a search for more demonstrable signs of sanctification. The Southern Methodist hierarchy responded by denouncing the movement in 1894. [26]
When Crumpler returned to North Carolina in 1894, the "Bishop of North Carolina would not credential him without sanction from Bishop in Missouri." He turned to evangelism in Dauphin, Samson, and neighboring counties. [27]
In December 1895, Crumpler went to the Methodist conference in Elizabeth City [28] to request reassignment as an evangelist rather than circuit rider. [29] "On his way home, he stopped at New Bern where he ‘accidentally preached to the colored people in a meeting in the morning’ and for the white people in the evening at ‘Hancock Street’." [30]
His belief that God did not discriminate was more radical than his Holiness theology. He may have had to speak to African Americans and whites in separate meetings, but he preached the same message to both groups.
In May 1896, Crumpler was back in Sampson County where his revival in Dunn ignited a regional awakening. When he was preaching his "‘Sermon to the Colored,’ whites began to crowd in with blacks under the tent." [31]
The success in Dunn led to more invitations. A New Bern newspaper reported Crumpler would be holding "a series of Tent meetings at Stones Bay" in Onslow County in November 1896. [32] In December it noted he was at Kinston. [33]
The Methodist hierarchy tried Crumpler for insubordination in 1899. [34] He withdrew from the conference to form the Holiness Church the next year. [35] Among the tenets defined in its 1901 Discipline was the general view that
"a person will know unmistakably that he is God’s child, by feeling God’s spirit bearing witness with his spirit that he is a child of God." [36]
It added the Holiness belief in sanctification removed all remnants of original sin "through the blood of Christ." [37]
This language was not very different from that of Free Will Baptists. In 1898, church elders explained the denomination did not accept original sin, the belief underpinning Wesleyanism. Still, individuals had to overcome their propensity to "transgress God’s Law." [38] This was done through baptism, the death of the original self, [39] and a new birth "of the Spirit" as one of "God’s children." [40]
Preachers in the Cape Fear Conference were the most open to Crumpler. Joseph Campbell suggested individuals from other denominations joined the Free Will Baptist church when they were excommunicated by their own churches. [41] Conference membership increased by 18% in 1896. [42]
The Western Conference responded to the surge in potential members in 1894 by reaffirming full immersion baptism was required for membership. [43] The Central Conference withdrew from the Eastern one in 1895, but maintained the same Discipline. [44] While the Eastern Conference included the counties on Pamlico Sound, which lay between the mainland and the Outer Banks, [45] the Central Original Conference included the areas most affected by Crumpler. [46]
In 1906, a member of the Holiness Church went to hear William Seymour at Azusa Street in Los Angeles. [47] When Gaston Cashwell returned, he held a month-long revival in Dunn. Attendees soon were "speaking in tongues, singing in tongues, laughing the holy laugh, shouting and leaping and dancing and praising God." [48]
The Holiness Church was divided over using tongues as the sole evidence of attainting Holiness, as distinct from one of God’s gifts. [49] In 1908, Crumpler and others left what then became a Pentecostal denomination. [50] Many of the members of the Cape Fear Conference followed Cashwell. In 1911, they formed their own Pentecostal Free Will Baptist church. [51]
End Notes
1. Phoebe Palmer and the post-Civil War camp meeting movement were discussed in the post for 7 December 2017.
2. Superficially revivals and camps meetings were the same: both sought to convert people. While their goals and sermons may have been the same, the social experiences differed.
Revivals were conducted in local churches by the local ministers, perhaps with the aid of someone from the district level to reinforce theological orthodoxy. They followed Charles Finney’s suggestions to break the wills of potential converts before their neighbors. [52]
Camp meetings were held at a distance, often in a field or woodland. Individuals attended with their family or friends, but mingled with strangers. While revivals were held on successive evenings, camp meetings lasted all day. Different preachers took turns, so more than one interpretation might be heard. During breaks between speakers, there was more time for singing.
3. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 5 May 1883. 1.
Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 9 November 1883. 1. "[Unclear name] closed the series of revival meetings at the M. E. church." ME was the Southern Methodist church.
4. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 28 May 1885. 1.
5. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 8 May 1887. 2.
6. Charles Crossfield Ware. Pamlico Profile. New Bern: Owen G. Dunn Company, 1961. 59. The mandate was discussed on page 25.
7. Ware. 12. James B. Bennett told him "in early days we had preaching four times a year." [53]
8. Vinson Synan. The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997 edition. 64. Emphasis added.
9. T. F. Harrison and J. M. Barfield. History of the Free Will Baptists of North Carolina. Ayden, North Carolina: Free Will Baptist Press, 1898. 387.
10. Harrison. 390.
11. Synan. 64–65. Emphasis added.
12. Wikipedia. "Chautauqua."
13. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 4 September 1889. 1. It was sponsored by Lane’s Chapel.
14. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 6 September 1890. 1. It was sponsored by Lane’s Chapel.
15. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 22 July 1891. 1. It lasted for two weeks and was sponsored by Lane’s Chapel.
16. David Whitten. "Depression of 1893." Economic History Association website. Edited by Robert Whaples. 14 August 2001. His source was Christina Romer. "Spurious Volatility in Historical Unemployment Data." Journal of Political Economy 94:1–37:1986.
17. Meeting minutes of the Cape Fear Conference reported 1,419 members in 1892 [54] and 1,789 in 1893. [55]
18. Meeting minutes for the Eastern Conference were less reliable. Leaders reported 8,318 in 1890, [56] 7,907 in 1891, [57] nothing in 1892, and 8,874 in 1893. [58] The 1891 number did not fall in the chronological order of minutes, and so was hard to interpret. If the 1891 number was wrong or represented a different part of the Conference, then the change between 1890 and 1893 may have been one of slow, steady increase.
19. Carteret County was shown on the map included with the post for 15 March 2020.
20. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 12 August 1894. 1. William S. Powell and Michael Hill located Hunting Quarter in The North Carolina Gazetteer. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2010 edition. 258.
21. "Wade Shore Camp Meeting." The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 26 June 1894. 1. One word in the OCR text was not decipherable. The reference to "summer visitors" may suggest Northerners, who were familiar with Holiness meetings, were important sponsors of these particular events. They even may have been responsible for introducing the Northern Methodist idea into the area.
22. In 1887, the editor of the Methodist Quarterly Review wrote:
"The holiness association, the holiness periodical, the holiness prayer meeting, the holiness preacher, are all modern novelties. They are not Wesleyan. We believe that a living Wesley would never admit them into the Methodist system." [59]
23. R. Michael Thornton. Fire in the Carolinas. Lake Mary, Florida: Creation House, 2014. 16. Sampson County was the "on" west of Duplin County on the map posted on 15 March 2020. It had been settled by Scots-Irish migrants in 1745. Descendants of New Bern’s original Anabaptist soon joined them. [60]
24. "Rev. A. B. Crumpler." The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 13 December 1895. 1.
25. Thornton. 40.
26. Synan. 39–40.
27. Daily Journal, 13 December 1895.
28. Thornton. 51.
29. Daily Journal, 13 December 1895.
30. Thornton. 51.
31. Thornton. 51.
32. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 10 October 1896. 4. Onslow County was mentioned in the post for 15 March 2020 and was shown on the map with the same post.
33. Item. New Berne Weekly Journal. 24 December 1896. 1. Kinston was mentioned in the post for 15 March 2020 and was shown on the map with the same post.
34. Synan. 63. He was acquitted, and withdrew voluntarily.
35. A. B. Crumpler. The Discipline of the Holiness Church. Goldsboro, North Carolina: Nash Brothers, 1901. 3–4. Quoted by Joseph Enoch Campbell. The Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1898-1948. Franklin Springs, Georgia: Publishing House of the Pentecostal Holiness Church, 1951. Reprinted by Wipf and Stock Publishers of Eugene, Oregon, in 2016. 219–220.
36. Campbell. 225.
37. Campbell. 226. This language had been used by Palmer. When she was wrestling with her failure to feel salvation, she argued with herself: "I am either a child of God, or I am not." [61] She thought longer, and compared loving God to loving her parents. In her journal, she concluded
"I know I love them, and on the same principle I know that I love God, and therefore I KNOW that I am a Child of God." I then heartily believed, simply because GOD said so. I had the evidence of his WORD, and therefore with confidence said, ‘I know that I have the evidences of adoption, I am a Child of God’." [62]
38. Harrison. 95.
39. "This water baptism is a declaratory or representative ordinance. Connecting Christ’s death and burial, as the procuring cause of salvation, and his resurrection as the pledge and assurance of a future felicity, with our personal experience, it represents or declares our death and burial to the world, and resurrection to ‘newness of life’." [63]
40. Harrison. 97.
41. Campbell. 250.
42. Meeting minutes of the Cape Fear Conference reported 1,829 members in 1895 [64] and 2,159 in 1896. [65]
43. Harrison. 396.
44. Harrison. 341.
45. The Eastern Conference included Pamlico and Craven counties, as well as Beaufort, Carteret, Hyde, Jones, and Lenoir south of the Neuse river. [66]
46. The Central Original Conference included "Lenoir, on the North side of Neuse river, Wayne, on the West side of the Wilmington & Weldon R. R., and Wilson the same as Wayne, Greene, Pitt, Martin, Washington, Hertford, Bertie, Northampton, Edgecombe, Halifax, Dare, Tyrrell and Southampton, Va." [67]
47. Seymour and Azusa Street were discussed in the post for 7 December 2017.
48. Campbell. 240–241.
49. For instance, Crumper thought divine healing was available to "every believer who would call for the Elders of the Church." Illness was not considered a sign of God’s displeasure. [68]
50. Campbell. 245.
51. Robert M. Anderson. Vision of the Disinherited. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979. 143.
52. Charles Grandison Finney was discussed in the post for 12 August 2017.
53. James B. Bennett. Quoted by Ware. 14.
54. Harrison. 382.
55. Harrison. 383.
56. Harrison. 336.
57. Harrison. 330.
58. Harrison. 340.
59. Daniel Whedon. Quoted by Synan. 35. Synan’s source was John Leland Peters. Christian Perfection and American Methodism. New York: Abington Press, 1956. 139.
60. Wikipedia. "Sampson County, North Carolina."
61. Phoebe Palmer. Journal entry, August 1835. In The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer. Edited by Richard Wheatley. New York: W. C. Palmer, Jr., 1876. 29.
62. Palmer. 29–30.
63. Harrison. 39.
64. Harrison. 385.
65. Harrison. 386.
66. Harrison. 341.
67. Harrison. 341.
68. Campbell. 226.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
New Bern Camp Meetings
Topic: Early Versions - Performers
Seven of the seventeen songs collected by Julian Boyd from Minnie Lee in Pamlico County, North Carolina, in 1926 had religious content. Four of those were described by Henry Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson as "Negro fragments." [1]
The question is how did an African-American song like "Come by Here" cross the color line, when slaves fled from area plantations to New Bern when Union forces took control in 1862. [2]
The African-American population in New Bern has been estimated at around 3,100 in 1860. [3] Joe Mobley said 8,591 freedmen were in the New Bern area in January 1864. A year later there were 10,782. Thousands followed Sherman as his army moved through Georgia toward Richmond in 1865. Five thousand came to New Bern as a consequence. [4] The refugee camp on James Island in the Trent River "swelled to about 3,000 blacks." [5] Another along the Trent River housed individuals from Goldsboro. [6]
After the Civil War, the Freedman’s Bureau encouraged individuals to return to plantations as sharecroppers. The African-American population dropped, but James City persisted until the 1890s when a new land owner [7] evicted everyone. [8] The president of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad [9] wanted the island for commercial use. [10]
African Americans who stayed in New Bern and those who moved back to rural areas carried with them a regional culture [11] that developed when slaves, who had been isolated on plantations, mingled with one another. Like Thomas Wentworth Higginson in Beaufort, South Carolina, [12] a soldier stationed in New Bern in 1863 kept notes. He wrote:
"Our nights are rendered musical by the plaintive choral hymnings of devotional negroes in every direction, alone and in groups. From their open cabins comes the mingled voices of men wrestling painfully and agonizingly with the spirit, and those uttering the ecstatic notes of the redeemed." [13]
Zenas Haines also recorded his impression of their funereal customs. He wrote:
"The negroes here honor the Hibernian custom of ‘waking’ their dead. On occasions of this sort, they sometimes render night so hideous by their songs and shoutings that the guard is attracted to the scene of their spiritual orgies, to enforce order. At midnight, the revellers solemnly refresh themselves with coffee, and then resume their howling, reciting and chanting simple hymns, line by line." [14]
When freedmen established churches, they were not the ones of their former owners. Instead, they reopened a Baptist church closed by whites. The A.M.E Zion church was introduced in 1863, and in 1864 the older AME church was absorbed by it. [15] Haines visited one church in 1863 where "the singing was congregational, and line by line, as it was read by the preacher." [16]
After Reconstruction, camp meetings began to be reported in local newspapers, [17] but usually in association with violence. The Newbernian reported a "colored man was seriously stabbed in the side by a white man" at a "Colored camp meeting" in Broad Creek on 4 October 1879. [18] In 1888, the stereotype was so familiar, a New Bern journalist could say checks were "flying through the air like razors at a colored camp meeting" and be sure his simile would be understood. [19]
Sponsors for mass meetings rarely were mentioned, so there is no way to know if they were influenced by the camp meeting movement inspired by Phoebe Palmer or if they were an indigenous form derived from memories of pre-Civil War meetings. They already were so well known in 1880 a minstrel troop staged one as part of its program in Boston. [20]
In 1881, a railroad may have been experimenting with promoting events as a way to generate revenue. In mid October, trains arrived in New Bern from Morehead City, Beaufort, Kinston, and Goldsboro. From there, they went to Jumping Run in Onslow County. [21] Local papers reported "every passenger car on the Midland Road is engaged, and number of boxes and flats have been improvised as temporary passenger trains." [22]
Camp meetings were held in Kinston in 1883, [23] 1884, [24] 1885, [25] and 1887. [26] Two to three thousand people were present on a Sunday evening in 1884. The "Wise Fork colored camp-meeting" was "held in the open air, under the shade of heavy oaks and pines." A reporter noted "many white people were present and seemed greatly to enjoy the proceedings." He added "the singing was grand, enchanting, making such music as might have been heard at Bayreuth when Richard Wagner ‘stirred the concord of sweet sounds’." [27]
By 1886, steamers were beginning to be used. A camp meeting at Barrington Wood’s was fifteen minutes away. A visitor reported the pavilion could seat 3,000 and that on a Tuesday night there was a "fair sprinkling of white people, although the majority of the crowd were colored." [28]
In addition to steamers, groups could rent excursion boats from private individuals. These wouldn’t have been announced in the newspaper, so there’s no easy way of knowing how common they were. In 1882, the New Bern A.M.E Zion church hired one for a camp meeting on Goose Creek to celebrate the completion of its new building. [29]
No more African-American camp meeting notices appeared in New Bern newspapers until 1895, when an additional train was scheduled to take individuals to "a (colored) Union camp meeting" at Scott’s Hill in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1895. [30] This was repeated in 1896. [31]
Jim Crow laws were being adopted elsewhere in the South, especially after the Supreme Court issued its Plessy v Ferguson decision in 1896. [32] North Carolina was one of the last states to decree segregated passenger cars on railroads in 1899, [33] and the first to isolate African Americans on steamboats. [34] Since other states already had discriminatory laws, interstate railroads, which had absorbed local ones by this time, probably already were applying restrictions uniformly.
After 1899, the appearance of news items on camp meetings in New Bern newspapers no longer could be used as an indicator of African-American religious activity. What ones do exist suggest the character of mass meetings changed as a new generation came of age, which hadn’t spent time in refugee centers at the end of the Civil War.
Segregation limited potential camp-meeting locations to ones near New Bern. No more reports were published of whites attending them, even in small numbers. Although some may have done so, the wall between cultural groups was less permeable. Songs would have needed a different route to cross the barrier.
The language used to report African-American events changed as well. In 1906, a New Bern paper reported "the colored race are having a series of camp meetings at a place on Duck Creek about three miles from New Bern." [35] The creek emptied into the Neuse across the river from James City and was accessible by small boats.
In 1908, reporters used a camp meeting as an occasion for ridicule. The streetcar carrying "darkies on the way back from the negro camp meeting at Centre Grove" caught fire. The paper said passengers "went headlong over the dashboard, while other crawled out beneath the restraining bars. None took thought as to the manner and method of their departure but fled as though pursued by a thousand devils." [36]
Map
PhilFree. Selection from "North Carolina Counties." Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 11 July 2006. Updated by DieBuche on 15 May 2010. Vance is short for Vanceboro.
End Notes
1. Belden and Hudson edited the text volumes of The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. [37] They classified three songs as religious, based on genre. I identified them solely by lyric content. One example of the difference was "Old Dan Tucker." They labeled it a play party, which it was. However, Lee ended every line with a reference to the Lord:
"Old Dan Tucker clam a tree
His Lord and Saviour for to see.
The limb did break and he did fall;
He never saw his Lord at all!" [38]
The other versions simply ended with references to Tucker:
"There was a man in Chapel Hill town
Who carried a load of molasses down;
The ’lasses worked, and the hoops did bust
And sent him home in thundergust." [39]
2. Joe A. Mobley. James City. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, 1981. 1.
3. Alan D. Watson. A History of New Bern and Craven County. New Bern: Tyron Palace Commission, 1987. 307. The New Bern population in 1860 was 5,432 of which 44% was slave and 13% was freed bondsmen.
4. Mobley. 25. Jacob Cox moved from New Bern toward Goldsboro on 14 March 1863. Sherman moved from Kinston to Raleigh on 13 April 1863. [40]
5. Mobley. 25.
6. Mobley. 43.
7. Mobley. 76. In 1880, the heirs of the original plantation sold 618 acres with James City to Mary S. Bryan.
8. Mobley. 81.
9. Mobley. 76. James Augustus Bryan was president of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad and the National Bank of New Bern.
10. Mobley. 89.
11. Judging from the participants in camp meetings shown on the map, New Bern’s supra-plantation culture reached west along the railroad and south along the coast. It did not look north toward Virginia and Maryland.
12. Higginson was discussed in the post for 20 September 2018.
13. Zenas T. Haines. Letter, 12 May 1863. 106–107 in Corporal. Letters from the Forty-fourth Regiment M.V.M. Boston: Herald Job Office, 1863. Mobley brought this to my attention. [41]
14. Haines. Letter, 1 June 1863. 114. Watson brought this to my attention. [42] Nothing in Haines’ letter suggested he did anything more than hear sounds; he probably did not see the people, and so could not comment on physical movements and rituals.
15. Wiley J. Williams. "St. Peter AME Zion Church." NC Pedia website. 2006.
16. Haines. Letter, 22 March 1863. 89.
17. On 16 August 2019, I asked Google for all entries with the keywords "camp meeting" and "New Bern" for every year from 1870 to 1926. Most of the responses were OCR transcriptions of newspaper pages. The quality of the translations depended on the cleanliness of the originals. I’ve found, in other research, if a copied page had been much handled it would have illegible sections, perhaps from oil deposits from the skin. Dirt and creases also could made it difficult for the computer program. When things were miscopied, they then couldn’t be found by search tools.
18. Item. The [New Bern] Newbernian. 4 October 1879. 3. Broad Creek appeared on the map for 19 January 2020.
19. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 12 December 1888. 2.
20. Sandra Jean Graham. Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 2018. No page numbers in online edition. The troop was J. H. Haverly’s Gigantic Colored Minstrels.
21. Item. [New Bern] Daily Commercial News. 18 October 1881. Cited by Mobley. 75.
Item. [New Bern] Daily Commercial News. 19 October 1881. 1.
Item. [New Bern] Daily Commercial News. 23 October 1881. 1.
22. Item. [New Bern] Daily Commercial News. 16 October 1881. 1.
23. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 20 September 1883. 1. The OCR transcription was poor; all that was clear in the garbage was "The colored camp meeting." A few lines later "Sunday near Kinston" was legible.
24. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 24 September 1884. 1.
25. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 26 August 1885. 1. The location was "a pine grove, one mile east of Kinston."
26. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 4 September 1887. 1. "The annual camp meeting of our colored churches."
27. Daily Journal, 26 August 1885.
28. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 16 September 1886. 1. I couldn’t confirm a location for Barrington or Barrington’s Woods. It was a surname in New Bern and Craven County.
29. Item. New Berne Weekly Journal. 19 October 1882. 3.
30. Item. New Berne Weekly Journal. 22 August 1895. 3.
31. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. August 15, 1896. 4.
32. Gilbert Thomas Stephenson. "The Separation of The Races in Public Conveyances." The American Political Science Review 3:180–204:1909. 191.
33. Stephenson. 191.
34. Stephenson. 189.
35. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 24 May 1906. 1.
36. "Street Car Catches Fire." The New Bern Sun. 11 August 1908. 7.
37. Publication details were provided in the post for 8 December 2019.
38. Minnie Lee. "Old Dan Tucker." Brown 3:116.
39. Dr. Kemp P. Battle. "Ole Dan Tucker." Brown 3:116.
40. Wikipedia. "Campaign of the Carolinas."
41. Mobley. 10.
42. Watson. 399.
Seven of the seventeen songs collected by Julian Boyd from Minnie Lee in Pamlico County, North Carolina, in 1926 had religious content. Four of those were described by Henry Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson as "Negro fragments." [1]
The question is how did an African-American song like "Come by Here" cross the color line, when slaves fled from area plantations to New Bern when Union forces took control in 1862. [2]
The African-American population in New Bern has been estimated at around 3,100 in 1860. [3] Joe Mobley said 8,591 freedmen were in the New Bern area in January 1864. A year later there were 10,782. Thousands followed Sherman as his army moved through Georgia toward Richmond in 1865. Five thousand came to New Bern as a consequence. [4] The refugee camp on James Island in the Trent River "swelled to about 3,000 blacks." [5] Another along the Trent River housed individuals from Goldsboro. [6]
After the Civil War, the Freedman’s Bureau encouraged individuals to return to plantations as sharecroppers. The African-American population dropped, but James City persisted until the 1890s when a new land owner [7] evicted everyone. [8] The president of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad [9] wanted the island for commercial use. [10]
African Americans who stayed in New Bern and those who moved back to rural areas carried with them a regional culture [11] that developed when slaves, who had been isolated on plantations, mingled with one another. Like Thomas Wentworth Higginson in Beaufort, South Carolina, [12] a soldier stationed in New Bern in 1863 kept notes. He wrote:
"Our nights are rendered musical by the plaintive choral hymnings of devotional negroes in every direction, alone and in groups. From their open cabins comes the mingled voices of men wrestling painfully and agonizingly with the spirit, and those uttering the ecstatic notes of the redeemed." [13]
Zenas Haines also recorded his impression of their funereal customs. He wrote:
"The negroes here honor the Hibernian custom of ‘waking’ their dead. On occasions of this sort, they sometimes render night so hideous by their songs and shoutings that the guard is attracted to the scene of their spiritual orgies, to enforce order. At midnight, the revellers solemnly refresh themselves with coffee, and then resume their howling, reciting and chanting simple hymns, line by line." [14]
When freedmen established churches, they were not the ones of their former owners. Instead, they reopened a Baptist church closed by whites. The A.M.E Zion church was introduced in 1863, and in 1864 the older AME church was absorbed by it. [15] Haines visited one church in 1863 where "the singing was congregational, and line by line, as it was read by the preacher." [16]
After Reconstruction, camp meetings began to be reported in local newspapers, [17] but usually in association with violence. The Newbernian reported a "colored man was seriously stabbed in the side by a white man" at a "Colored camp meeting" in Broad Creek on 4 October 1879. [18] In 1888, the stereotype was so familiar, a New Bern journalist could say checks were "flying through the air like razors at a colored camp meeting" and be sure his simile would be understood. [19]
Sponsors for mass meetings rarely were mentioned, so there is no way to know if they were influenced by the camp meeting movement inspired by Phoebe Palmer or if they were an indigenous form derived from memories of pre-Civil War meetings. They already were so well known in 1880 a minstrel troop staged one as part of its program in Boston. [20]
In 1881, a railroad may have been experimenting with promoting events as a way to generate revenue. In mid October, trains arrived in New Bern from Morehead City, Beaufort, Kinston, and Goldsboro. From there, they went to Jumping Run in Onslow County. [21] Local papers reported "every passenger car on the Midland Road is engaged, and number of boxes and flats have been improvised as temporary passenger trains." [22]
Camp meetings were held in Kinston in 1883, [23] 1884, [24] 1885, [25] and 1887. [26] Two to three thousand people were present on a Sunday evening in 1884. The "Wise Fork colored camp-meeting" was "held in the open air, under the shade of heavy oaks and pines." A reporter noted "many white people were present and seemed greatly to enjoy the proceedings." He added "the singing was grand, enchanting, making such music as might have been heard at Bayreuth when Richard Wagner ‘stirred the concord of sweet sounds’." [27]
By 1886, steamers were beginning to be used. A camp meeting at Barrington Wood’s was fifteen minutes away. A visitor reported the pavilion could seat 3,000 and that on a Tuesday night there was a "fair sprinkling of white people, although the majority of the crowd were colored." [28]
In addition to steamers, groups could rent excursion boats from private individuals. These wouldn’t have been announced in the newspaper, so there’s no easy way of knowing how common they were. In 1882, the New Bern A.M.E Zion church hired one for a camp meeting on Goose Creek to celebrate the completion of its new building. [29]
No more African-American camp meeting notices appeared in New Bern newspapers until 1895, when an additional train was scheduled to take individuals to "a (colored) Union camp meeting" at Scott’s Hill in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1895. [30] This was repeated in 1896. [31]
Jim Crow laws were being adopted elsewhere in the South, especially after the Supreme Court issued its Plessy v Ferguson decision in 1896. [32] North Carolina was one of the last states to decree segregated passenger cars on railroads in 1899, [33] and the first to isolate African Americans on steamboats. [34] Since other states already had discriminatory laws, interstate railroads, which had absorbed local ones by this time, probably already were applying restrictions uniformly.
After 1899, the appearance of news items on camp meetings in New Bern newspapers no longer could be used as an indicator of African-American religious activity. What ones do exist suggest the character of mass meetings changed as a new generation came of age, which hadn’t spent time in refugee centers at the end of the Civil War.
Segregation limited potential camp-meeting locations to ones near New Bern. No more reports were published of whites attending them, even in small numbers. Although some may have done so, the wall between cultural groups was less permeable. Songs would have needed a different route to cross the barrier.
The language used to report African-American events changed as well. In 1906, a New Bern paper reported "the colored race are having a series of camp meetings at a place on Duck Creek about three miles from New Bern." [35] The creek emptied into the Neuse across the river from James City and was accessible by small boats.
In 1908, reporters used a camp meeting as an occasion for ridicule. The streetcar carrying "darkies on the way back from the negro camp meeting at Centre Grove" caught fire. The paper said passengers "went headlong over the dashboard, while other crawled out beneath the restraining bars. None took thought as to the manner and method of their departure but fled as though pursued by a thousand devils." [36]
Map
PhilFree. Selection from "North Carolina Counties." Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 11 July 2006. Updated by DieBuche on 15 May 2010. Vance is short for Vanceboro.
End Notes
1. Belden and Hudson edited the text volumes of The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. [37] They classified three songs as religious, based on genre. I identified them solely by lyric content. One example of the difference was "Old Dan Tucker." They labeled it a play party, which it was. However, Lee ended every line with a reference to the Lord:
"Old Dan Tucker clam a tree
His Lord and Saviour for to see.
The limb did break and he did fall;
He never saw his Lord at all!" [38]
The other versions simply ended with references to Tucker:
"There was a man in Chapel Hill town
Who carried a load of molasses down;
The ’lasses worked, and the hoops did bust
And sent him home in thundergust." [39]
2. Joe A. Mobley. James City. Raleigh: North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History, 1981. 1.
3. Alan D. Watson. A History of New Bern and Craven County. New Bern: Tyron Palace Commission, 1987. 307. The New Bern population in 1860 was 5,432 of which 44% was slave and 13% was freed bondsmen.
4. Mobley. 25. Jacob Cox moved from New Bern toward Goldsboro on 14 March 1863. Sherman moved from Kinston to Raleigh on 13 April 1863. [40]
5. Mobley. 25.
6. Mobley. 43.
7. Mobley. 76. In 1880, the heirs of the original plantation sold 618 acres with James City to Mary S. Bryan.
8. Mobley. 81.
9. Mobley. 76. James Augustus Bryan was president of the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad and the National Bank of New Bern.
10. Mobley. 89.
11. Judging from the participants in camp meetings shown on the map, New Bern’s supra-plantation culture reached west along the railroad and south along the coast. It did not look north toward Virginia and Maryland.
12. Higginson was discussed in the post for 20 September 2018.
13. Zenas T. Haines. Letter, 12 May 1863. 106–107 in Corporal. Letters from the Forty-fourth Regiment M.V.M. Boston: Herald Job Office, 1863. Mobley brought this to my attention. [41]
14. Haines. Letter, 1 June 1863. 114. Watson brought this to my attention. [42] Nothing in Haines’ letter suggested he did anything more than hear sounds; he probably did not see the people, and so could not comment on physical movements and rituals.
15. Wiley J. Williams. "St. Peter AME Zion Church." NC Pedia website. 2006.
16. Haines. Letter, 22 March 1863. 89.
17. On 16 August 2019, I asked Google for all entries with the keywords "camp meeting" and "New Bern" for every year from 1870 to 1926. Most of the responses were OCR transcriptions of newspaper pages. The quality of the translations depended on the cleanliness of the originals. I’ve found, in other research, if a copied page had been much handled it would have illegible sections, perhaps from oil deposits from the skin. Dirt and creases also could made it difficult for the computer program. When things were miscopied, they then couldn’t be found by search tools.
18. Item. The [New Bern] Newbernian. 4 October 1879. 3. Broad Creek appeared on the map for 19 January 2020.
19. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 12 December 1888. 2.
20. Sandra Jean Graham. Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 2018. No page numbers in online edition. The troop was J. H. Haverly’s Gigantic Colored Minstrels.
21. Item. [New Bern] Daily Commercial News. 18 October 1881. Cited by Mobley. 75.
Item. [New Bern] Daily Commercial News. 19 October 1881. 1.
Item. [New Bern] Daily Commercial News. 23 October 1881. 1.
22. Item. [New Bern] Daily Commercial News. 16 October 1881. 1.
23. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 20 September 1883. 1. The OCR transcription was poor; all that was clear in the garbage was "The colored camp meeting." A few lines later "Sunday near Kinston" was legible.
24. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 24 September 1884. 1.
25. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 26 August 1885. 1. The location was "a pine grove, one mile east of Kinston."
26. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 4 September 1887. 1. "The annual camp meeting of our colored churches."
27. Daily Journal, 26 August 1885.
28. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 16 September 1886. 1. I couldn’t confirm a location for Barrington or Barrington’s Woods. It was a surname in New Bern and Craven County.
29. Item. New Berne Weekly Journal. 19 October 1882. 3.
30. Item. New Berne Weekly Journal. 22 August 1895. 3.
31. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. August 15, 1896. 4.
32. Gilbert Thomas Stephenson. "The Separation of The Races in Public Conveyances." The American Political Science Review 3:180–204:1909. 191.
33. Stephenson. 191.
34. Stephenson. 189.
35. Item. The [New Bern] Daily Journal. 24 May 1906. 1.
36. "Street Car Catches Fire." The New Bern Sun. 11 August 1908. 7.
37. Publication details were provided in the post for 8 December 2019.
38. Minnie Lee. "Old Dan Tucker." Brown 3:116.
39. Dr. Kemp P. Battle. "Ole Dan Tucker." Brown 3:116.
40. Wikipedia. "Campaign of the Carolinas."
41. Mobley. 10.
42. Watson. 399.
Sunday, March 1, 2020
Teen Ambassadors - Kum - Ba - Yah
Topic: Religious Folk Music Revival
Moral Re-Armament spawned groups that were similar to its Sing Out ’65 in 44 cities by April of 1966. [1] One apparently was organized at the Indiana Yearly Meeting in August 1965. [2] When the Teen Ambassadors performed in Greenfield, Indiana, in November 1966, a local newspaper described them as "kind of a Quaker Sing Out group." [3] Their second album [4] included Up, Up with People’s "What Color Is God’s Skin?" [5]
Presumably someone from the Yearly Meeting went to the 1965 youth conference on Mackinac Island mentioned in the post for 23 February 2020. The group organized before MRA’s Sing Out ’66 appeared in Indianapolis in April of 1968. [6]
The Ambassadors began with twenty high-school students, [7] and grew to forty to fifty people in a year. In that time they had appeared in fifty churches where they usually conducted the evening service. [8]
The first Quakers in Indiana came from North Carolina in 1806. [9] They soon were followed by others attracted to cheap fertile land that wasn’t embedded in a slave economy. [10] By 1820, more that two thousand Friends had settled in small, enclaves in Wayne, Randolph, and nearby counties. [11] They later were joined by Quakers moving west from Pennsylvania and Ohio. [12]
The October 1860 Yearly Meeting was the first to hold a session specifically for the young. This led to "a new path of evangelicalism." [13] This blended into Phoebe Palmer’s Holiness Movement after the Civil War, [14] with an influx of Methodists toward the end of the century. [15]
The Methodists probably were ones exiled by their home churches when the Methodist hierarchy began opposing more radical forms of Holiness preaching. [16] The immediate effect was an introduction of Wesleyan practices including hymn singing. [17] Some meetings in Indiana began to pay pastors. [18]
The Ambassador’s director, Dale Lewis, was music director for a revival crusade in Winchester that brought together 20 churches from Wayne, Randolph, and Jay counties in 1966. [19] This was probably the homeland of many of the young choir’s members. Lewis lived in Lynn in Randolph County. [20]
The teenagers probably met on a regular basis in Lynn to rehearse, and traveled by automobile to the various churches where they performed. The number who went to any one event probably depended on the distance and the timing in the academic year.
The Teen Ambassadors made an album in June 1971 when more than a hundred people appeared in the group photograph. One side featured contemporary music supported by a Beatles-style band. The other side had more traditional gospel songs like "How Great Thou Art" [21] and "Blessed Assurance" [22] with piano accompaniments that would appeal to older members of the audiences. They also included two songs songs in the spiritual tradition: Ralph Carmichael’s [23] arrangement of "Amen" and "Kumbaya."
The arrangement of "Kum - Ba - Yah" used soloists for the two verses, while the group sang the burden. The first time the young men and women used chordal harmony, and the other two repetitions were more complex, but identical. Variation was introduced by the pianist. [24]
The musical choice showed a deep understanding by Lewis or his assistant of the capabilities of adolescents. No song on the album was outside the range of developing voices, except for the last line of "How Great Thou Art." [25] By using instrumental, rather than vocal, variations in the music he was able to create a version that could be sung by however many people happen to show up an any given event.
The album only included singing by the choir. However, newspapers noted their performances also included instrumental music, with duets, trios, and quartets. [26] Some individuals, no doubt, spoke about the humanitarian missions they supported with the offerings, [27] and their personal faith. [28] This kind of variation was another way Lewis could provide an evening’s entertainment or church service with a group of committed, but variously rehearsed, school students.
Although the group appeared in eleven states, [29] most of the Ambassadors’ appearances fell into the old Quaker area marked by the counties of Howard (Kokomo), Randolph (Lynn), Wayne (Richmond), and Hamilton (Westfield). Lewis indicated "they have been invited back to some churches every year." [30] By 1972, they had their own weekly radio program. [31]
The choir traveled to the Kansas Yearly Meeting in September 1972, [32] and Jan Crouch was listed as musical director in October in the last newspaper report of the group on-line. [33] Lewis’ son entered college that fall. [34] In 1974, Lewis was mentioned as the pastor with a Quaker church in Wichita. [35]
The Ambassadors lasted long enough for children who were in sixth grade when it was organized to sing with the group in their senior year of high school.
Performers
Vocal Soloists: probably Rebecca Reece and Larry Lewis
Vocal Group: photograph shows 26 young men; 36 young women are to their right (stage right) and 44 to their left
Vocal Director: Dale Lewis
Instrumental Accompaniment: banjo, piano, possibly guitars and bass
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum set
Credits
arr. Derric Johnson - Lillenas Pub. [36]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum by YAH; kum had a hard "k" and a short "u"
Verses: kumbaya, praying, singing
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: verse-burden
Verse Repetition Pattern: kumbaya after every verse
Ending: repeat word "kumbaya" at end of each verse
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition after the first "kumbaya" verse with the vocal part; the instrumental accompaniment varied with each iteration
Ending: held last "Lord" of final verse and slow the final repetition of "kumbaya"
Singing Style: one note to one syllable, except for final "Lord"
Solo-Group Dynamics: when the young woman began the "praying" verse, the group repeated "kumbaya" three times, starting a little after she began. They continued this pattern for the rest of the song, both when the young man was singing the "singing" verse and when the group was singing the "kumbaya" burdens. The chords were more complex on the final iteration.
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: banjo solo by Larry Lewis introduced the song and accompanied the first "kumbaya" verse sung by the group. The piano took over with the young female soloist, and remained the main accompaniment thereafter. While the pianist played chords, he or she also added elements borrowed from Southern gospel music like counter melodies and arpeggios in rests in the singing. It remained subdued throughout, and may have been supplemented by the guitars and bass: elsewhere on the album the group used an acoustic and an electric guitar, and an acoustic and an electric bass.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: recording session
Location: "on location recording." [37] The group was photographed in the mourning bench area of a church. The walls were plain white, with a simple wooden cross on the wall.
Microphones: recording session
Clothing: The girls were wearing dresses or jumpers and blouses; the hems generally were 2" above the knees; their hair was nape to shoulder length and not treated with dyes or strong permanents. The boys wore suits or sports jackets with ties; their hair did not extend beyond the hair line in back, but was long in front like the early Beatles.
Notes on Movement
In the photograph, the group was standing in four rows on risers. The young men were in the middle and visible from the central aisle. The wooden pews blocked a clear view of the young women’s legs and feet.
Notes on Performers
Dale Lewis graduated from Fort Wayne Bible College "in 1952 with a Diploma in Bible." He and his wife, Judith Moser, were ordained and served in Quaker and Daniel Warner’s Church of God churches. [38] In 1974 he was named chairman of the Youth Commission of the Evangelical Friends Alliance and listed as living in Wichita. [39]
His son Larry played banjo on the "Kumbaya" and probably sang the male solo. His dormitory supervisor at Fort Wayne Bible College remembered he had a low voice. While at the school he played basketball and sang "with the college singing group Positive Side in the summer of 1973." He moved to Kansas after he graduated, earned a teacher’s certificate and coached high school sports. More recently he has been on the staff of the Evangelical Quaker college in Haviland, Kansas, [40] where he continues to share his "musical talent." [41]
Douglas Jan Crouch grew up around Farmland, a small community in Randolph College where he played trumpet as a boy, [42] and studied piano. [43] He taught choir in the local high school from 1992 until 2007. [44] He later taught at the Muncie Music Center. [45] During the open meeting on the elimination of his position in Knightsbridge he sang eight bars of "Amazing Grace."
"He stated his performance was technically correct, general music will meet the minimum requirements for this task. He repeated the same eight bars and stated the difference between the first and second was the addition of heart and soul. He said when you take away choral you take away the heart and soul of the music department." [46]
Availability
Teen Ambassadors. "Kum - Ba - Yah." Sing for Christ. LP 390. Recorded by Crusade Enterprises, Flora, Illinois, in 1971. [47]
Graphics
Ruhrfisch. "Locator Map of Indiana, United States." Wikimedia Commons. Uploaded 2April 2007; last updated 25 April 2017. Based on map issued by United States Census.
End Notes
1. "‘Sing’ Out ’66 Stirs Waves of Patriotism." Indianapolis News. 30 April 1966.
2. Liner notes, Sing. "The Teen Ambassadors group was born out of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the Sessions of Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends in August of 1965."
3. "Greenfield Friends." The [Greenfield, Indiana] Daily Reporter. 11 November 1966. 6.
4. Teen Ambassadors. Travel for Christ. LPS 452. Produced by Crusade Studios.
5. Details on "What Color" appeared in the post for 23 February 2020.
6. Indianapolis News.
7. "Teen Ambassadors Appearing." The Kokomo [Indiana] Tribune. 17 June 1972. 5.
8. Daily Reporter.
9. John William Buys. "Quakers in Indiana in the Nineteenth Century." PhD dissertation. University of Florida, 1973. 8.
10. Buys. 10–11. Ashley Humphries studied a group who moved from Westfield in Surry County, North Carolina, to Westfield, Hamilton County, Indiana, in the same period. She reached the same conclusion that their reasons were mainly economic. In addition, she thought the fact there was a larger community in Indiana with more possible marriage partners was a draw. [48]
11. Buys. 10.
12. Buys. 11.
13. Buys. 277–278. Quotation, 278.
14. Buys. 280–281. Students at the Quaker Earlham College were involved in the 1866-1867 school year, and "the General Meeting in 1867 became in fact a Friends’ revival meeting with Quaker evangelists in charge." [page 281]
15. Buys. 278–280.
16. A syncretic relationship existed between the Quaker’s Inner Light and the Holiness experience.
17. Buys. 283.
18. Buys. 283–285.
19. Daily Reporter.
20. Liner notes, Sing.
21. A number of settings exist for Carl Boberg’s poem, "How Great Thou Art." Stuart K. Hines’ 1953 version was popularized by the Billy Graham crusades. [49]
22. The music for "Blessed Assurance was written by Phoebe Palmer’s daughter, Phoebe Knapp. [50] The words were added by Fanny Crosby in 1873. It first was published by Palmer’s Guide to Holiness and Revival Miscellany. [51 Carlton Young said it became " one of the ten most popular hymns sung by United Methodists." [51]
23. Carmichael was discussed in the post for 15 December 2017.
24. Three people were listed as piano players on the album: Marjorie Stevenson, Jan Crouch, and Rebecca Reece. Since Reece also was listed as a soloist, she probably did not play on this song.
25. "How Great Thou Art" uses a wide vocal range. The soprano part in the Methodist hymnal goes from middle C to, in the last phrase, high E. [53]
26. "Teen Ambassadors Presenting Program at Sycamore Friends." The Kokomo Tribune. 13 January 1968. 7. Clipping posted by bscjones on 19 December 2015.
"Teen Ambassadors Are To Appear At Friends Church." Anderson [Indiana] Daily Bulletin. 9 December 1966. 24.
27. Liner notes, Sing. "The youth donate their time and travel. Through contributions received at each performance, Teen Ambassadors have supported mission work in East Africa, Jamaica, Oklahoma, and Teen Challenge."
28. Kokomo Tribune, 1972. It described "a program of songs and testimony."
29. Liner notes, Sing.
30. Liner notes, Sing. I assume the notes were written by Lewis.
31. Liner notes, Walk.
32. "KYM Youth Yearly Meeting." Evangelical Friend 6:21: September 1972.
33. Wedding notice. Palladium-Item [Richmond, Indiana] 27 October 1972. 10.
34. "Larry Lewis g76." Fort Wayne Bible Institute alumni website.
35. "Evangelical Friends Alliance Officers 1974-75." Evangelical Friend 7:19 March 1974
36. Liner notes, Sing.
37. Liner notes, Sing.
38. "Larry Lewis g76." Fort Wayne Bible College alumni website. Warner’s Church of God, located in Anderson, Indiana, was discussed in the post for 17 December 2017.
39. Evangelical Friend, 1974. The Evangelical Friends Church evolved among those meetings that were influenced by Joseph John Gurney and John Wesley in the nineteenth century. It began organizing formally in 1965. [54]
40. Fort Wayne Bible College. Haviland was settled by Quakers from Indiana; [55] its high school evolved into Barclay College [56] where Lewis was vice-president of Institutional Advancement. [57]
41. Dave Kingrey. "Larry Lewis." Promotion for Church Leadership Institute for Ministry conference, 11 July 2016. Evangelical Friends Church – Mid America Yearly Meeting website.
42. "Winners Announced." Palladium-Item. 28 March 1954. 12.
43. "Jan Crouch." Muncie Music Center website.
44. Jeff Eakins. "CAB School Board Officially Terminates Crouch’s Position." The [Knightsbridge, Indiana] Banner website. 30 March 2007.
45. Muncie Music Center website.
46. Minutes of a special session of Charles A. Beard Memorial School Corporation, 15 May 2007.
47. Kokomo Tribune, 1972, provided the recording date.
48. Ashley Ellen Humphries. "The Migration of Westfield Quakers from Surry County, North Carolina 1786-1828." Masters thesis. Appalachian State University, May 2013. 105–106.
49. Wikipedia. "How Great Thou Art."
50. Wikipedia. "Fanny Crosby."
51. Wikipedia. "Blessed Assurance.
52. Carlton Young. Quoted by C. Michael Hawn. "Blessed Assurance." The United Methodist Church Discipleship website. 18 February 2014.
53. "How Great Thou Art." The United Methodist Hymnal. Edited by Carlton R. Young. Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989. 77.
54. Wikipedia. "Evangelical Friends Church International."
55. Wikipedia. "Haviland, Kansas."
56. Wikipedia. "Barclay College."
57. Kingrey.
Moral Re-Armament spawned groups that were similar to its Sing Out ’65 in 44 cities by April of 1966. [1] One apparently was organized at the Indiana Yearly Meeting in August 1965. [2] When the Teen Ambassadors performed in Greenfield, Indiana, in November 1966, a local newspaper described them as "kind of a Quaker Sing Out group." [3] Their second album [4] included Up, Up with People’s "What Color Is God’s Skin?" [5]
Presumably someone from the Yearly Meeting went to the 1965 youth conference on Mackinac Island mentioned in the post for 23 February 2020. The group organized before MRA’s Sing Out ’66 appeared in Indianapolis in April of 1968. [6]
The Ambassadors began with twenty high-school students, [7] and grew to forty to fifty people in a year. In that time they had appeared in fifty churches where they usually conducted the evening service. [8]
The first Quakers in Indiana came from North Carolina in 1806. [9] They soon were followed by others attracted to cheap fertile land that wasn’t embedded in a slave economy. [10] By 1820, more that two thousand Friends had settled in small, enclaves in Wayne, Randolph, and nearby counties. [11] They later were joined by Quakers moving west from Pennsylvania and Ohio. [12]
The October 1860 Yearly Meeting was the first to hold a session specifically for the young. This led to "a new path of evangelicalism." [13] This blended into Phoebe Palmer’s Holiness Movement after the Civil War, [14] with an influx of Methodists toward the end of the century. [15]
The Methodists probably were ones exiled by their home churches when the Methodist hierarchy began opposing more radical forms of Holiness preaching. [16] The immediate effect was an introduction of Wesleyan practices including hymn singing. [17] Some meetings in Indiana began to pay pastors. [18]
The Ambassador’s director, Dale Lewis, was music director for a revival crusade in Winchester that brought together 20 churches from Wayne, Randolph, and Jay counties in 1966. [19] This was probably the homeland of many of the young choir’s members. Lewis lived in Lynn in Randolph County. [20]
The teenagers probably met on a regular basis in Lynn to rehearse, and traveled by automobile to the various churches where they performed. The number who went to any one event probably depended on the distance and the timing in the academic year.
The Teen Ambassadors made an album in June 1971 when more than a hundred people appeared in the group photograph. One side featured contemporary music supported by a Beatles-style band. The other side had more traditional gospel songs like "How Great Thou Art" [21] and "Blessed Assurance" [22] with piano accompaniments that would appeal to older members of the audiences. They also included two songs songs in the spiritual tradition: Ralph Carmichael’s [23] arrangement of "Amen" and "Kumbaya."
The arrangement of "Kum - Ba - Yah" used soloists for the two verses, while the group sang the burden. The first time the young men and women used chordal harmony, and the other two repetitions were more complex, but identical. Variation was introduced by the pianist. [24]
The musical choice showed a deep understanding by Lewis or his assistant of the capabilities of adolescents. No song on the album was outside the range of developing voices, except for the last line of "How Great Thou Art." [25] By using instrumental, rather than vocal, variations in the music he was able to create a version that could be sung by however many people happen to show up an any given event.
The album only included singing by the choir. However, newspapers noted their performances also included instrumental music, with duets, trios, and quartets. [26] Some individuals, no doubt, spoke about the humanitarian missions they supported with the offerings, [27] and their personal faith. [28] This kind of variation was another way Lewis could provide an evening’s entertainment or church service with a group of committed, but variously rehearsed, school students.
Although the group appeared in eleven states, [29] most of the Ambassadors’ appearances fell into the old Quaker area marked by the counties of Howard (Kokomo), Randolph (Lynn), Wayne (Richmond), and Hamilton (Westfield). Lewis indicated "they have been invited back to some churches every year." [30] By 1972, they had their own weekly radio program. [31]
The choir traveled to the Kansas Yearly Meeting in September 1972, [32] and Jan Crouch was listed as musical director in October in the last newspaper report of the group on-line. [33] Lewis’ son entered college that fall. [34] In 1974, Lewis was mentioned as the pastor with a Quaker church in Wichita. [35]
The Ambassadors lasted long enough for children who were in sixth grade when it was organized to sing with the group in their senior year of high school.
Performers
Vocal Soloists: probably Rebecca Reece and Larry Lewis
Vocal Group: photograph shows 26 young men; 36 young women are to their right (stage right) and 44 to their left
Vocal Director: Dale Lewis
Instrumental Accompaniment: banjo, piano, possibly guitars and bass
Rhythm Accompaniment: drum set
Credits
arr. Derric Johnson - Lillenas Pub. [36]
Notes on Lyrics
Language: English
Pronunciation: kum by YAH; kum had a hard "k" and a short "u"
Verses: kumbaya, praying, singing
Vocabulary
Pronoun: someone
Term for Deity: Lord
Special Terms: none
Basic Form: verse-burden
Verse Repetition Pattern: kumbaya after every verse
Ending: repeat word "kumbaya" at end of each verse
Unique Features: none
Notes on Music
Opening Phrase: 1-3-5
Tempo: moderate
Basic Structure: strophic repetition after the first "kumbaya" verse with the vocal part; the instrumental accompaniment varied with each iteration
Ending: held last "Lord" of final verse and slow the final repetition of "kumbaya"
Singing Style: one note to one syllable, except for final "Lord"
Solo-Group Dynamics: when the young woman began the "praying" verse, the group repeated "kumbaya" three times, starting a little after she began. They continued this pattern for the rest of the song, both when the young man was singing the "singing" verse and when the group was singing the "kumbaya" burdens. The chords were more complex on the final iteration.
Vocal-Accompaniment Dynamics: banjo solo by Larry Lewis introduced the song and accompanied the first "kumbaya" verse sung by the group. The piano took over with the young female soloist, and remained the main accompaniment thereafter. While the pianist played chords, he or she also added elements borrowed from Southern gospel music like counter melodies and arpeggios in rests in the singing. It remained subdued throughout, and may have been supplemented by the guitars and bass: elsewhere on the album the group used an acoustic and an electric guitar, and an acoustic and an electric bass.
Notes on Performance
Occasion: recording session
Location: "on location recording." [37] The group was photographed in the mourning bench area of a church. The walls were plain white, with a simple wooden cross on the wall.
Microphones: recording session
Clothing: The girls were wearing dresses or jumpers and blouses; the hems generally were 2" above the knees; their hair was nape to shoulder length and not treated with dyes or strong permanents. The boys wore suits or sports jackets with ties; their hair did not extend beyond the hair line in back, but was long in front like the early Beatles.
Notes on Movement
In the photograph, the group was standing in four rows on risers. The young men were in the middle and visible from the central aisle. The wooden pews blocked a clear view of the young women’s legs and feet.
Notes on Performers
Dale Lewis graduated from Fort Wayne Bible College "in 1952 with a Diploma in Bible." He and his wife, Judith Moser, were ordained and served in Quaker and Daniel Warner’s Church of God churches. [38] In 1974 he was named chairman of the Youth Commission of the Evangelical Friends Alliance and listed as living in Wichita. [39]
His son Larry played banjo on the "Kumbaya" and probably sang the male solo. His dormitory supervisor at Fort Wayne Bible College remembered he had a low voice. While at the school he played basketball and sang "with the college singing group Positive Side in the summer of 1973." He moved to Kansas after he graduated, earned a teacher’s certificate and coached high school sports. More recently he has been on the staff of the Evangelical Quaker college in Haviland, Kansas, [40] where he continues to share his "musical talent." [41]
Douglas Jan Crouch grew up around Farmland, a small community in Randolph College where he played trumpet as a boy, [42] and studied piano. [43] He taught choir in the local high school from 1992 until 2007. [44] He later taught at the Muncie Music Center. [45] During the open meeting on the elimination of his position in Knightsbridge he sang eight bars of "Amazing Grace."
"He stated his performance was technically correct, general music will meet the minimum requirements for this task. He repeated the same eight bars and stated the difference between the first and second was the addition of heart and soul. He said when you take away choral you take away the heart and soul of the music department." [46]
Availability
Teen Ambassadors. "Kum - Ba - Yah." Sing for Christ. LP 390. Recorded by Crusade Enterprises, Flora, Illinois, in 1971. [47]
Graphics
Ruhrfisch. "Locator Map of Indiana, United States." Wikimedia Commons. Uploaded 2April 2007; last updated 25 April 2017. Based on map issued by United States Census.
End Notes
1. "‘Sing’ Out ’66 Stirs Waves of Patriotism." Indianapolis News. 30 April 1966.
2. Liner notes, Sing. "The Teen Ambassadors group was born out of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the Sessions of Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends in August of 1965."
3. "Greenfield Friends." The [Greenfield, Indiana] Daily Reporter. 11 November 1966. 6.
4. Teen Ambassadors. Travel for Christ. LPS 452. Produced by Crusade Studios.
5. Details on "What Color" appeared in the post for 23 February 2020.
6. Indianapolis News.
7. "Teen Ambassadors Appearing." The Kokomo [Indiana] Tribune. 17 June 1972. 5.
8. Daily Reporter.
9. John William Buys. "Quakers in Indiana in the Nineteenth Century." PhD dissertation. University of Florida, 1973. 8.
10. Buys. 10–11. Ashley Humphries studied a group who moved from Westfield in Surry County, North Carolina, to Westfield, Hamilton County, Indiana, in the same period. She reached the same conclusion that their reasons were mainly economic. In addition, she thought the fact there was a larger community in Indiana with more possible marriage partners was a draw. [48]
11. Buys. 10.
12. Buys. 11.
13. Buys. 277–278. Quotation, 278.
14. Buys. 280–281. Students at the Quaker Earlham College were involved in the 1866-1867 school year, and "the General Meeting in 1867 became in fact a Friends’ revival meeting with Quaker evangelists in charge." [page 281]
15. Buys. 278–280.
16. A syncretic relationship existed between the Quaker’s Inner Light and the Holiness experience.
17. Buys. 283.
18. Buys. 283–285.
19. Daily Reporter.
20. Liner notes, Sing.
21. A number of settings exist for Carl Boberg’s poem, "How Great Thou Art." Stuart K. Hines’ 1953 version was popularized by the Billy Graham crusades. [49]
22. The music for "Blessed Assurance was written by Phoebe Palmer’s daughter, Phoebe Knapp. [50] The words were added by Fanny Crosby in 1873. It first was published by Palmer’s Guide to Holiness and Revival Miscellany. [51 Carlton Young said it became " one of the ten most popular hymns sung by United Methodists." [51]
23. Carmichael was discussed in the post for 15 December 2017.
24. Three people were listed as piano players on the album: Marjorie Stevenson, Jan Crouch, and Rebecca Reece. Since Reece also was listed as a soloist, she probably did not play on this song.
25. "How Great Thou Art" uses a wide vocal range. The soprano part in the Methodist hymnal goes from middle C to, in the last phrase, high E. [53]
26. "Teen Ambassadors Presenting Program at Sycamore Friends." The Kokomo Tribune. 13 January 1968. 7. Clipping posted by bscjones on 19 December 2015.
"Teen Ambassadors Are To Appear At Friends Church." Anderson [Indiana] Daily Bulletin. 9 December 1966. 24.
27. Liner notes, Sing. "The youth donate their time and travel. Through contributions received at each performance, Teen Ambassadors have supported mission work in East Africa, Jamaica, Oklahoma, and Teen Challenge."
28. Kokomo Tribune, 1972. It described "a program of songs and testimony."
29. Liner notes, Sing.
30. Liner notes, Sing. I assume the notes were written by Lewis.
31. Liner notes, Walk.
32. "KYM Youth Yearly Meeting." Evangelical Friend 6:21: September 1972.
33. Wedding notice. Palladium-Item [Richmond, Indiana] 27 October 1972. 10.
34. "Larry Lewis g76." Fort Wayne Bible Institute alumni website.
35. "Evangelical Friends Alliance Officers 1974-75." Evangelical Friend 7:19 March 1974
36. Liner notes, Sing.
37. Liner notes, Sing.
38. "Larry Lewis g76." Fort Wayne Bible College alumni website. Warner’s Church of God, located in Anderson, Indiana, was discussed in the post for 17 December 2017.
39. Evangelical Friend, 1974. The Evangelical Friends Church evolved among those meetings that were influenced by Joseph John Gurney and John Wesley in the nineteenth century. It began organizing formally in 1965. [54]
40. Fort Wayne Bible College. Haviland was settled by Quakers from Indiana; [55] its high school evolved into Barclay College [56] where Lewis was vice-president of Institutional Advancement. [57]
41. Dave Kingrey. "Larry Lewis." Promotion for Church Leadership Institute for Ministry conference, 11 July 2016. Evangelical Friends Church – Mid America Yearly Meeting website.
42. "Winners Announced." Palladium-Item. 28 March 1954. 12.
43. "Jan Crouch." Muncie Music Center website.
44. Jeff Eakins. "CAB School Board Officially Terminates Crouch’s Position." The [Knightsbridge, Indiana] Banner website. 30 March 2007.
45. Muncie Music Center website.
46. Minutes of a special session of Charles A. Beard Memorial School Corporation, 15 May 2007.
47. Kokomo Tribune, 1972, provided the recording date.
48. Ashley Ellen Humphries. "The Migration of Westfield Quakers from Surry County, North Carolina 1786-1828." Masters thesis. Appalachian State University, May 2013. 105–106.
49. Wikipedia. "How Great Thou Art."
50. Wikipedia. "Fanny Crosby."
51. Wikipedia. "Blessed Assurance.
52. Carlton Young. Quoted by C. Michael Hawn. "Blessed Assurance." The United Methodist Church Discipleship website. 18 February 2014.
53. "How Great Thou Art." The United Methodist Hymnal. Edited by Carlton R. Young. Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing House, 1989. 77.
54. Wikipedia. "Evangelical Friends Church International."
55. Wikipedia. "Haviland, Kansas."
56. Wikipedia. "Barclay College."
57. Kingrey.
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